The post sheds light on the fact that the sending of invites must also be received and then accepted within the same limited time frame from when invites become available and when they are turned off a short time after.

So apparently, if you are sharing Google+ invites with your friends, only those who are ready to receive it on the other end and then click the link to sign up will actually find themselves with a Google+ account before Google flips off the switch, as we’ve seen so far.

Knowing this fact has helped to ease my own frustration and false assumptions surrounding the whole invite process.

Content creation and keeping your fans interested until they buy is a core strategy of social media. It creates a bind between customers and the brand. It creates a feeling of reciprocity. These are powerful marketing techniques.

The catch, of course, is that content is hard to create.

Most brands create blogs, but then are unable to maintain them. Or if they do, they are not really maintaining them well enough to keep fans interested enough to create any real business results.

If you are blogging on behalf of your business and trying to create a connection to your brand, here are a few templates to help you create blog posts that will provide value for your readers and keep your fans close.

Reach the next level of social media management with HootSuiteâ€™s newest publishing tools: Publisher views, Limited Permissions and Profile Picker.

Social Media Scheduling

HootSuite was the first social media tool to offer message scheduling, now with the new publisher tool, you can plan your updates with greater ease. Slice and dice the destination profiles for each message and drag-and-drop your updates into timeslots to match your editorial plans.

According to the report, from Sophos, Facebook recently began changing its users’ privacy settings to automatically turn on a facial recognition feature that detects a user’s face in an image. Once the person’s face is detected, the Web site then encourages Facebook friends to tag them. Facebook introduced this feature last year for its North American users; it is now rolling it out globally.

Facebook never fails, it seems, to edge us closer toward having our own moments of absolute panic concerning our personal privacy online. Or sheer terror, even.

For years, Facebook’s communications strategy to users has always been to limit awareness while rolling out new features, then deal with the consequences later on. Although controversial, this has worked out in their favor time and time again. The negative press and social media chatter dies down in a week or two and most users willingly accept the new, invasive features—or at least they slowly warm up to the idea. After all, we need Facebook more than they need us, and they know it.

At the end of the day we will most likey accept these new privacy-restricting features, regardless of how awful they are or how much they break sacred ethical business standards, forcing us to give up the ability to control what is rightly ours. They’ve done their homework; they’ve done their research; and they’ve compelted countless hours of user studies.

Facebook is not the uneducated toddler lacking any comprehension of what it means to be play nice that we think they are. Because unfortunately for us, their strategy actually works. And it will continue to work even better in the future as our culture continues to shift from one that values privacy to one that is more transparent and open. If you don’t believe me that this is happening, find the nearest high school student and ask for his or her opinion. Being more open is a social norm for many Facebook users already, even to the point where they might not know what you are talking about if you ask. Is this a universal view? Of course not. But I dare you to find a college freshman and ask, just to be sure.

In the end, I suppose, both businesses and consumers benefit as long as Facebook has the balance of an Olympic gymnist while intelligently positioning themselves smack on the center of the fence.

Facebook continues to finds ways to connect our social lives more and more for our continuing pleasure and satisfaction. They do this while at the same time collecting far above and beyond the most extensive data set of human behavior in existence for the sole purpose of exploiting the spoils to feed profits of gargantuan proportions. Hey, it’s a business. Corporate social responsibility need not apply—we’ll continue to feed our addiction regardless. They know exactly how to give us what we want and push the limit just enough each time that it becomes impossible to “just say no” to Facebook. We’ll get over it, eventually.

A majority of marketers are engaging in social media as a marketing channel, and a large number of those consider the professional networking site LinkedIn as offering the best ROI.

The â€œBMA Project Case Study,â€ a survey of Business Marketing Association members by online research company Itracks Online Data Collection, found that 89% of respondents are using social media as part of their marketing mix. LinkedIn was favored as providing the greatest ROI by 49% of respondents, followed by Twitter (20%), Facebook (15%), blogs and videos (11%) and YouTube (6%).

Interesting survey of Business Marketing Association members found LinkedIn to be the most favored social media platform among marketers, with greater return on investment (ROI) than Twitter, Facebook, or blogs/videos.

The study begs the question as to whether these results apply to public relations practitioners.

13% of online adults use the status update service Twitter, which represents a significant increase from the 8% of online adults who identified themselves as Twitter users in November 2010. 95% of Twitter users own a mobile phone, and half of these users access the service on their handheld device.

Check out the link for full details, to read the full report, and to view Pew’s survey questions used for operationalizing and measuring the concepts examined. One great aspect of their study was to sample the population in such a way to include both English- and Spanish-speaking populations.

Did Mom invent social media? Some say she did. And there is no arguing that she is driving it and helping it to evolve. There are 82 million moms across the U.S. of all ages. That’s right, 82 million. And 26 million of them are mommy bloggers. And they are grassroots, Oprah-like brand advocates with loyal followers who can change the trajectory of a brand and its products.